Posted on 11/07/2012 6:21:33 PM PST by Arthurio
Inside the ballroom in the Boston conference centre where Romney gave his perfunctory concession speech last night, his supporters were stunned by the scale of his defeat when just hours earlier they were confident of success or at least a nail-biting finish.
But hindsight will probably view Mitt Romney a poor presidential candidate who appeared to have no core values, was selected only reluctantly by his own party and campaigned as if the whole experience was deeply uncomfortable for him.
He made plenty of mistakes but his biggest failing was that even after running for the White House for the best part of six years it was hard to fathom exactly who he was or what he really believed – as opposed to what he thought voters wanted him to believe.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2229083/US-Election-2012-analysis-Hindsight-view-Mitt-Romney-poor-candidate-says-Toby-Harnden.html#ixzz2BarVWZ5u Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Nixon was 2-1 in Presidental campaigns, perhaps his first win was stolen, 0.67 is a winning record, that’s like being 11-5 in the NFL.
Rep. Tom McClintock (CA-4) looks like a winner to me.
Two of the last three republican presidents (Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush) were governors. I hope that, in 2016, the GOP nominee will be a conservative who has been a governor and has also been a U.S. senator or congressman. I hope that former Sen. Judd Gregg, Sen. John Hoeven, Gov. Butch Otter, Gov. Bobby Jindal, Gov. Nathan Deal, Gov. Sam Brownback, Gov. Mary Fallin, and Gov. John Kasich will run.
Scott Walker.
you are correct, of course. And it is worse. The federal government/media/Democrat organization has all those folks organized into political groups ... an endless political army that goes 24/365. So, it is the Government that we are fighting. It is as if the CCCP in Soviet Russia or Commie China allowed free elections. The Government supported party would win. Even if they lost, they just stalemate until they are back in power. Which is really what they did under Reagan. They waited him out.
but the calamity is coming and after the calamity is the future and we will still have to do politics in the future, regardless of how much the country melts away into moral and economic ruin.
EXCELLENT post, Pete! EXCELLENT!!!
Part of it is the lost culture war. Bill Clinton so lowered the bar of the Presidency as well. People to this day are in denial as to whom and what he is. The crimes he committed in office going back to his stint as Attorney General of AR in the late ‘70s are staggering. I believe absolutely that both he and Gore were complicit in selling nuclear secrets to Red China. Treason of the highest order.
There’s one thing we really need to stop doing, and I’ve said it before... We need to stop looking for the next Reagan. Looking for the next “fill-in-the-blank” is a recipe for disappointment. Reagan was one of a kind. So was Coolidge. So was Harding. They were all men for their time. Instead, let’s look for talented and accomplished figures, both men and women, whose record matches their rhetoric, who can lead in our time.
Tuesday night merely confirmed the GOP ran flawed candidates, both for the Presidency and for the Senate. Some we knew were flawed going in, others who flamed out after they got the nomination or didn’t prove up to the task of running. The Senate races hurt, but at least it wasn’t as bad as 1958, where we lost more races in one cycle before or since in the history of the party. That took 22 years to recover from. We’ll get some of those seats back in 2018... we just have to make sure we put up our best people. We have a cornucopia of Dem seats up for 2014 that are almost guaranteed to get us above 50.
Sadly having the skills to run the country, means nothing if you don’t have the skills to win an election.
Romney is just the symptom of the disease plaguing the entire Republican Party. The Party has to get young, and boot out all of the deadweight of the past. As in sports, it’s time to “blow up the team”.
The Brit author of this piece, undoubtedly a lefty writing for The Mail, is pretty much off base. So is Mr. McIntyre, who has no reason to be embarrassed.
Romney ran a pretty good campaign with no major gaffes. His debate performance was solid. The GOP campaign seemed to be geared to picking up independent voters, among whom he apparently picked up a significant majority. He may regret not playing up the Benghazi issue more, but for some reason he didn't. He may have overestimated the intelligence of the American electorate.
Problem is that when one side is honest and plays by the rules and the other cheats and lies like crazy and uses illegal voters and rigs vote counting machines, for example, the good guys are it a severe disadvantage.
There is pretty good evidence from the numbers of this election (especially the sound Romney advantage with independents) that the better man had it stolen from him by the fraudsters and cheaters. As Edmond Burke once famously said, "all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing."
So "vastly better" that he still couldn't win. It doesn't matter that Gerald Ford was narrowing the gap by November 1976, but he still lost to Carter. I stated he was too flawed to win, and it was indeed the case. I also don't believe his conversion to Conservatism. He was just doing the same thing he's done over the past 18 years, just telling the folks what they want to hear to win. It worked precisely one time (twice, if you count that ridiculous and convoluted primary this year, but he couldn't muster actual majorities, just paltry pluralities).
Even had he managed to win, I think he would've comfortably settled into merely managing Socialist big government. No sweeping changes or reforms. That would've been less than useless. All reasons why I couldn't vote for him in good conscience (not that it mattered, Zero carried precisely 4 counties in TN out of 95, getting 1% lower than I predicted he would get -- 39%). Even carried a supermajority of Republicans into the state legislature, where we now have over 70% of the membership. Zero has been a boon for the GOP in TN for three consecutive cycles. There's almost literally nothing left for us to win.
"If anyone thinks Palin or any other magical candidate would have brought out more voters than they repelled, let me know what you're smokin."
The GOP put up one of THE most flawed candidates imaginable, one who was anathema to the base ! Imagine what running someone who wasn't would yield. We needed a street fighter, not a smiling used car salesman nodding his head in agreement during the debates and pulling his punches, scarcely different than the buffoon that was put up in 2008.
"This blame game misses the point that just as capitalism was from 1920 to about 1980, conservatism is entering a period where it is uncool, hard, and generally unpopular. That doesn't mean we change the message, but like Fredrich Von Hayek in the 30s, we must prepare for a very long haul until the cycle turns."
Baloney. The messenger was flawed. When you have someone running who doesn't even believe in what he says, you have a BIG problem, nevermind the image he projected that was decidely out of touch with average Americans. Now let's say we ran Gingrich. He'd have been better on message, but he was also flawed because of his personality and had sky-high unpopulars going back to after he became House Speaker. I got attacked here for pointing out that reality.
"However ranting about the moral condition, even if correct, doesn't address the solution. Simply saying, "we need mor(e) stable families," or "we have to end the gimme mentality" aren't strategies."
I wasn't addressing them as strategies, only as the side issue that Conservatives cannot resolve a lot of our ills exclusively through the political arena. Excuse me if I didn't emphasize that. We've got enormous work to do in insinuating overselves into the popular culture, education, et al. While we were winning political battles at the ballot box, the left has been busy for years winning the culture wars in the race to the bottom.
"We erroneously took the 2010 victories as evidence of a larger sentiment. Now, it looks as though those were the ceiling that can be reached in a non-presidential election (I.e. 40% of the regular turnout). Also, the 2010 elections came immediately after Obamacare. But 2 years later, that anger subsided. I could see it---but ignored it as most here did---when I spoke to these groups and they grew smaller. More important, they grew older."
I don't believe the anger has subsided at all. I think the GOP just didn't know what to do with it. We've still got the same people in charge and serving that did when we lost the Congress in 2006. Those folks have got to be replaced with forward-thinking individuals who can inspire the base and reach out to other disaffected persons. Millions didn't bother to show up in this election that might've voted for us had the party done a better job. This was inexcusable. But make no mistake, it was no victory for the left, either. If the numbers are correct at present, it will show Zero did not even get 50% of the vote. That is as sweeping a mandate as Clinton had in 1996, but with a difference... he got a higher % than his first race, Zero went the opposite way. Not since FDR in 1940 and 1944 has an incumbent President received a lower % in their successive election.
"Likewise, no amount of ranting about he moral correctness of conservatism is going to attract the majority of these younger people who are the energy of any movement. And four years ago when I saw how uniformly these college student and 20s disliked Palin and how even this could be observed at CPAC (despite her popular speech there) it finally dawned on me that they are gong to have to com to the realization on their own that not only is conservatism correct, but it is cool for civilization."
CPAC is rather a joke and not taken seriously by a lot of Conservatives. When you had either Ron Paul types or Willardbots flooding the events to buy or influence votes in disproportion to realistic support, it lost any and all credibility (much like with the left "nutroots" pimping Howard Dean in 2004). Palin remains a revered figure with the base, and any claims to the contrary are absurd. Outside the base, far too many don't know who she even is. They see the vicious attacks by the Hollyweird elites and the lying, insulting caricatures of Julianne Moore and Tina "Scarface" Fey and take them as gospel. It's remarkable to ponder what could've been done to an unaccomplished extremist far-left idealogue like Zero if the same culture similarly felt he was fair game.
The establishment is the big cancer. They’re the ones who foisted a failed, one term Socialist ex-Governor down our throats and expected Conservatives to rally around him like he was the Second Coming. Get rid of them, especially the Karl Roves and the like. Rove hates Conservatives and has worked mightily to counter us.
I am stating what everyone here already knows:
You cannot fight city hall. You cannot win in Chicago by running against the City Hall machine cuz you have got the city government campaigning against you.
Well, over the past 20 years, we’ve developed that system in Connecticut due to the professionalization of the state Legislature, the growth of staff, etc. Except, the system is statewide! And, of course, you got it in MA. State Government personnel campaign on behalf of their candidates. 24/365. I noticed even the local hospital (non-profit), was campaigning for their local state Senator in radio commercials. The Hospital. (They are on the dole.)
We have it nationally now ... it is completed and a majority.
If the GOP can get its act together, given the likelihood for an economic meltdown, there should be quite a number of targets for us in 2014. I haven’t crunched all the numbers yet, but virtually any Dem House member either sitting in a GOP-carried Presidential district and those who won within 10% are at risk.
NY, for example, under the new lines, 14 out of the 27 districts are winnable for us. A far better situation (as a percentage of the delegation, at least) than in neighboring MA. As with 2008, we’re back to having zero Republicans from New England (as it was, we had just the 2 in NH), and frankly, I think it was very fortunate that we dodged having the homosexual activist Socialist Tisei as the lone face of the New England House GOP. That would’ve been a disaster.
We need to zero in on those winnable districts as soon as we have the final numbers to know which to target and start to actively recruit and finance credible challengers. Many of those that ran this year might be suitable for a rematch, others not so much, but we have to get busy now and not let Tuesday’s setback deter us.
And....The Republican party will continue to do nothing!
By the way I admire West for demanding the impounding of all ballots and machines and demanding a recount.
And....The Republican party will continue to do nothing!
By the way I admire West for demanding the impounding of all ballots and machines and demanding a recount.
Agree with that, not much else.
The notion that there are a lot of entrenched quasi-RINOS in Washington---while true---is not easily addressed as we saw in 2010 and 2012 with the Senate and House races. Some Tea Party candidates lost (i.e., IN, OH). Some won (TX), some never made it out of the primary (MO).
What I think you would agree with me about is that EVEN if we could get a clean sweep of (say) 20 Rs elected to the senate in one cycle and ALL of them were Tea Party candidates, there is slippage: Scott Brown drifted away after a few months. Rubio is already often off script. There are certainly stalwarts (Johnson, Paul, DeMint) but my point is that even if the Tea Party candidates are totally successful, you still end up needing to replace 1/3 of them within a couple of years when they "go Washington." So not only do you have to elect the right people once, but then you have to unelect them sometimes in the very next cycle. And the threat of unelecting them or primarying them never seems sufficient incentive for them to toe the line, partly because they only get home a couple of times a year.
TN is great. I'm sure TX is pretty close too. But future electoral success MUST be fought in all states. We cannot keep conceding 150 electoral votes before the counting even starts. And for that, we need a strategy and a better rationale than "Obama wasn't as strong as he was in 08)" or, "The Tea Party's not quite dead yet."
These “Romney failed” articles are nothing but attempts to “cool the mark.”
They know damn well that Romney won, and any investigation is going to turn up massive corruption in the voting systems.
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